


libraries and zombies

by espressohno



Series: to sit in a library [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established McKirk, Insecurity, M/M, Prison, jim and christine are bffs, parole, stupidly obvious parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6378418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>third part of jim's backstory from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6272059">this</a><br/>and finally, this one isn't about gary mitchell</p>
            </blockquote>





	libraries and zombies

**Author's Note:**

> now that we're done with gary it's time for jim's relationship with christine chapel!!! you're welcome
> 
> ALSO: i finally made a tumblr so if you want to follow me and stuff my url is [espressohnope](http://espressohnope.tumblr.com/) yeah its dumb but w/e

Jim was way too early to work, but he didn’t realize it until he was already on the bus, at which point there was no real reason to turn back. So he found himself on the front steps of the library almost 45 minutes before it officially opened, 15 minutes before Christine would probably show up. He wasn’t locked out, of course, he had a badge and a backup key and the security codes to get in through the back. He decided to wait for her anyway. 

He sat on the steps and pulled off his jacket before he started sweating too much. Summer was starting to end, thank fuck, but mornings were still stupidly hot once the sun came out.  The air was humid most of the year in this godforesaken state. Sometimes there was at least a wind to balance it out, or the occasional dry cold in the wintertime that always made Jim think of Iowa. 

Jim had been thinking of Iowa a lot lately; of Iowa and prison and the cities in between that he only had fleeting memories of. He could tell he was acting different because of it, and he could tell that Leonard had noticed, too. He had no fucking idea how to explain himself though, because  _ I keep thinking about all of the years of my life that I wasted and making myself sad _ wasn’t going to cut it. But then again, his usual responses to Leonard’s worried looks--which were along the lines of  _ I’ll be okay _ ,  _ don’t worry _ ,  _ I’ll be fine eventually _ , and  _ take off your clothes _ \--didn’t seem to be cutting it either.

“You’re here early.” Christine’s voice and the clicking of her blue high heels pulled him out of his thoughts. He smiled at her and, thankfully, it didn’t feel too disingenuous. Christine had on a not-up-to code strapless dress and a cardigan over her arm that she would wait to wear until the air conditioners inside were on full blast. Jim pushed himself up from the steps. 

“Didn’t sleep well last night. Or any night. Figured I might as well head over here.”

Christine paused, put a hand on her hip. 

“Don’t you  _ live _ with a doctor now?”

Jim shrugged. She shook her head and they walked up the rest of the steps together. She unlocked the first set of doors. 

“Tell me you’re not still doing that thing where you don’t tell people when you’re having trouble.” She only had to glance over at Jim for the answer to that question. “Come on, Jim. You’re living together.”

Jim sighed and pressed his face to the wall while she swiped her badge and put in the code to open the second door, the one that actually took you inside the library. 

“I wouldn’t know where to start.” He said, following her inside, “Or where to end. Or what to say in between.” 

They walked through together while Christine turned on the lights and adjusted the A/C in every section of the library. 

“You don’t have to know; you just have to talk.”

Christine was right. Jim whined and slouched against a shelf, which he knew from memory was A-M of Art and Architecture books. Christine gave him a smile that sat halfway between pity and amusement. 

“Look, it’s scary, I know, but this guy likes you a lot. It took even less for you to open up to me.”

Christine was right, again. 

“I need coffee.” Jim said finally, uselessly. Christine huffed and pushed on his shoulder.

“You need to  _ talk _ to Leonard.”

“I know.” He breathed, “I know, okay, but also: coffee.”

“Fine.” She shrugged into her cardigan and added, “Make me some.” Before walking off towards the front desk. Jim turned in the opposite direction to the first floor breakroom. The rest of the staff would probably start showing up in a little bit. He went ahead and made a full pot. 

He needed to talk to Leonard. He needed to find the words to talk to Leonard. Jim leaned against the counter and dragged a hand down his face.  _ Why is this so goddamn difficult. _

 

***

 

_ three and a half years earlier _

 

The conditions of his parole required that he had a job, an apartment in an approved neighborhood, and went to drug counseling once a week. Drug counseling was the worst part, because Jim had a virtually clean drug record, save for a few instances with weed during high school, but it still beat prison. Jim would spend every Wednesday night for the rest of his life in drug counseling if it meant never setting foot in prison ever again. 

It was another Wednesday. Jim was getting fucking tired of working retail, because it felt like the only reason people ever came into a Footlocker was to put shoeboxes on the wrong shelves and complain about the price of Nikes. The second his shift ended he practically sprinted into the back, took off the stupid referee uniform and the black long sleeve shirt he had to wear underneath to hide his stupid tattoos. 

He changed into a t-shirt and blue jeans and headed to his stupid drug counseling meeting. 

The bright side of having been arrested in another state was that the stress of adjusting to a new city effectively took his mind off of the fact that his life was going nowhere. There was a good chance he’d be working in some bullshit store like Footlocker for the rest of his life, unless he became desperate enough to go back to Iowa or managed to afford community college again. But he didn’t have to spend time thinking about all of that, because it was enough for him to try and navigate the bus system and find places to eat and try not to get lost every time he had to check in with his parole officer. 

He made it to drug counseling, which was held group-style in a dusty baptist church, except the meeting had been fucking cancelled without warning. He shoved his hands in his pockets and brushed his foot back and forth on the sidewalk.  _ I could have been in bed right now _ . 

On the way back, after buying a bottled protein shake from the first convenient store he passed,  he accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up in a part of the city he’d never seen before. Nevermind that this happened all the time, it was still disorienting as hell, because he had spent the last year and a half only spending time in a few sections of the prison. There was the kitchen, which he was in for roughly half of the day, the library, which he only visited before breakfast when he wouldn’t run into too many people, the yard, which he went to only when he got restless, and the rest of his time was spent in his bunk, because he had learned pretty early on that the best way to stay out of trouble was to stay out of everything. 

Through his entire sentence, though, he had become excellent at numbing his anger into a less disruptive sense of nothingness. The anger only came out when he let it, when he was awake in the middle of the night or when he exercised in the yard. Other than that, he would only pull himself out of the numbness when he was reading. Something about the library, empty and silent in the morning, with hundreds of stories about lives that weren’t his own, made Jim feel safe. 

As luck would have it, he stopped in his path to throw away the empty bottle and realized that he was standing in front of the Atlanta Public Library. 

 

***

 

“I don’t know what’s worse, watching you walk through the stacks like a zombie or watching you sit at this table like a zombie.”

Jim had almost fallen asleep with his chin propped up on his hand, slouching over the table in the library that he’d inadvertently claimed for his own over the past few weeks. He chuckled and looked up at whoever it was standing over him, rubbed his face and tried his best to sit up straight.

It was one of the library employees who he usually saw at the front desk and occasionally made fleeting, awkward eye contact with as he walked in and out most days without a library card or any books. She was tall, with light blonde hair that would have looked dyed if her eyebrows weren’t the same color. She gave him a small smile, all sad eyes and light pink lip gloss. Jim realized that he probably looked like complete shit.

“I can go if it’s a problem.” He responded, mostly on instinct. 

“It’s not a problem.” She said, sitting down in the chair across from him. He finally read her name tag:  _ Christine _ . 

“I’m Jim.” He said, because she probably saw him reading her name tag and he wanted to make it clear he was looking at that and not...anything else.

“Hi Jim.” Christine sounded legitimately interested in talking to him. Jim realized, with bitterness, that that was the main reason he felt uncomfortable talking to her: the fact that she seemed like she actually wanted to listen. 

He suppressed a groan and wondered if he would ever be able to regain his social skills after repressing them for so long. 

“Do you need help?” She said again, pulling him out of his thoughts. He snapped up from the daze he’d fallen into, letting his eyes focus and unfocus on the surface of the table, and looked back at her, tried to smile. 

“Um. I’m okay. I think.” He lied. It was better, at the very least, than breaking down and telling his entire life story to an innocent civilian. 

Christine raised an eyebrow. She’d seen right through that, obviously, but she let it slide. Jim watched awkwardly as she stood up and took two steps closer, rested a hand on her hip. 

“Why don’t we go get you a library card?” She offered, and Jim couldn’t really think of a reason to say no. 

He needed help, he finally decided, the kind of help he didn’t know how to ask for, and definitely not something he could find in weekly  _ drug counseling.  _

So he let Christine sign him up for a library card, and then, slowly, he let her into the rest of his life, too. 


End file.
